The Mound - #12 - Cheese Dreams

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Perhaps the least-discussed darling of the pandemic was pizza. In those first few months of lockdown, whilst sit-in restaurants scrambled to become delivery services, people flocked to brands like Domino’s in search of a way to distinguish their Fridays and Saturdays from their weeknights. During this time, Domino’s share price reached an all time of $165 per share. Today its share price is about $51.

Now - whilst quick service restaurants tend to perform pretty well in tougher economic periods, a lot of cost-conscious consumers, seeking to avoid delivery fees, are picking their food-orders up in-store or via drive-through. This in part explains Domino’s struggles - but really they had this coming, since even before the pandemic.

If we’re going to be honest about it, pizza’s cultural status has been on the decline for some time now. You’ve got to remember that, before UberEats, before smartphones, before even the internet, pizza was almost ubiquitous. Like a demon from hell, all a teenager had to do was mutter ‘margherita’ into a landline three times and then they’d be fed within 30 minutes.

But then Domino’s - the Neopolitan Napoleon that it is - did what every dominator does, and that’s forget to play where they play best, diverting resources instead to stupid and irrelevant wars. For example, looking at the category more generally, you’d be forgiven for thinking that since the 90s all pizza purveyors’ plans for the future lay in answering the question: how much cheese can we fit inside of a disk? But as Domino’s food-scientists flocked to the quantum-verse, seeking to understand how they might stuff electrons with mozzarella, the rest of the food world caught up to pizza’s true differentiating characteristic. 

Pizza’s great strength has always been in its distribution, its (once) proprietary ability to feed a large group of people in just 30 minutes or less. 

To rectify Domino’s decline - and the status of pizza more widely - we must return Domino’s to its roots in distributive innovation.

Here’s how we fix it: 

It would be a mistake for a brand like Domino’s to entirely outsource delivery to platforms like UberEats - because, frankly, pizza travels better than just about any food at all. Pizza has a roving advantage in how long it can be kept warm and of an acceptable, delectable quality. Hell! We eat it cold and we’re still impressed. Embracing this might actually be key to - almost impossibly - still reducing the time between wanting a pizza and eating a pizza. 

Imagine you’re at a party with some friends. You feel a buzz in your pocket, so you pull at your phone to see that there is a large margarita pizza nearby. Right now it costs $12. You think that’s a bit steep - and you’re not quite hungry yet - so you put your phone away and get back to the party. 

Maybe an hour later, you’re sitting with your mate Donatello on a set of lawn chairs in the backyard. He mentions he’s hungry - and asks if you might be down to order something. Not sure yet, you look up to the sky. Flying in from the East and moving at a steady pace, is a flock of drones. The whirring blades waft the smell of cheese down to your Donnie’s nostrils. You get on the Domino’s app to see that, within the flock passing over you now, there are Extra Large Hawaiian on offer, trading for just $8.60. You ask Donatello if he’s down - and of course he is so you hit the button and confirm the trade. Immediately, one set of lights breaks from that sushi train in the sky and it’s less than 30 seconds before the pie from on high is presented to you and your mate, still seated in your chairs.You pull a piping hot box of pizza from the drone before waving goodbye to it, as it flutters back to rejoin its brothers and sisters in the sky. Now that’s amore. 

Prego, Australia.